Safety and Health Alert

Bargaining Key to Better Ergonomics at Work

For the tens of thousands of CWA members who do their jobs at a computer, a good ergonomic workstation, training to use it correctly and enough breaks per shift can be the difference between a healthy employee and one who's facing chronic or crippling injuries.

For employers, the difference amounts to thousands of days of lost time and literally millions of dollars in health care and lost time costs.

Yet despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, some of CWA's telecom employers insist that only 1 percent of the thousands of repetitive stress and strain injuries their workers suffer each year are a result of workplace ergonomic problems.

Employers would have us believe that instead of the eight hours a day or more that workers spend at computer and phone stations, it's the Sunday golf game, the Wednesday night bowling league, weekend gardening or virtually any other activity outside of work that's at fault.

Yes, some percentage of repetitive stress injuries to wrists, shoulders, backs and so on is likely caused by non-job activities. But when more than 2,700 workers in similar jobs at a single telecom employer suffer the same type of musculoskeletal disorders in a single year, it's nonsense to suggest that most of them aren't work-related.

For more than 25 years, CWA has been a pioneer in studying workplace ergonomics and we have done groundbreaking work with employers – bargaining contracts with such companies as Qwest and Verizon that include ergonomics training, education and evaluation language.

We lobbied hard for the federal ergonomics standard that was put in place with bipartisan support at the end of the Clinton administration after a decade of research and hearings. It took President Bush just a few days in office to wipe it out with the swipe of his pen.

We're still fighting for a federal rule and state regulations, which may be more promising. With the most anti-worker, corporate-friendly Congress in modern history, we know laws to protect employees from poor ergonomics will never pass without leadership change.

But a key goal now — being outlined at CWA's ongoing Occupational Safety and Health retreats in each district — is to improve ergonomic language in contracts that have it and include it in contracts that don't.

It should be an easy call for managers: Records supplied to CWA by two of our top employers show more than 120,000 days of lost time in 2003 related to musculoskeletal disorders. According to medical and scientific experts, identifying and treating these disorders can range from $10,000 to $15,000 per case, totaling tens of millions of dollars for our employers.

By emphasizing the numbers and costs, we are optimistic that we can improve contract language and spare thousands of our members the pain of a debilitating injury. And by helping employers save money by minimizing lost time and health care expenses, we will increase the funds available at the bargaining table to improve wages, benefits and other working conditions for all of our members in the unit.

— Dave LeGrande
CWA Safety and Health Director